Practice Manager the Practice Manager

Appropriate support will be offered to each family to enable them to address the child's particular needs. This will include enhancing the parents' ability to understand and promote the child's positive self-esteem, confidence, and identity. Barnardo's has access to a wide spectrum of support services which can be accessed to respond to individual need. Objectives and outcomes

• To provide children with safe, secure, and lasting adoptive families and our policies and services are directed towards achieving this outcome for children in need of adoption.
• To increase choice the diversity and capacity of adopters and to reduce delay in the adoption process for children. The children most likely to need our service are those of black and minority ethnic backgrounds, sibling groups, school-aged children, children who have additional needs arising from learning or physical disabilities and children with emotional and behavioural difficulties.
• To recruit, prepare, assess, and support prospective adoptive families. Potential adoptive families will be considered based on their capability to meet the needs of the identified children.
• To seek and provide a high level of emotional, practical, and legal support to children and families post adoption. The agency will look to help families in accessing the appropriate adoption support.
• The agency offers support to adults who have an adoption connection and offers an intermediary service to adults for whom Barnardo's is the relevant adoption agency.
• Barnardo's can offer a range of training and consultancy.
As a Practice Manager the Practice Manager post will be responsible for management and supervision of a team of social workers and other professionals. With hybrid working you have the flexibility to organise work priorities with work/life balance as we pride ourselves on providing all workers with a friendly, safe and supportive environment to work in. It is important to highlight that although this is a Scotland wide service there will be no expectation on the candidate to travel on a weekly basis. The Adoption Practice Manager will work collaboratively with other professionals and adoptive parents across Scotland to ensure we are meeting the sufficiency needs of Local Authorities, whilst providing a high quality service to all our parents.

To be successful in the role you will require strong leadership skills and relevant experience of working with adoptive parents, children and young people. You will oversee the day to day operations of the service to ensure effective service delivery from the point of initial contact through assessment and bringing children into our care. You should be able to demonstrate that you can bring high quality support to adoptive parents, birth parents and those in the adoption triangle and have a significant knowledge and experience within this sector. Part of your role will be to monitor performance, deal with staffing issues and deal with the training and development of the team and adoptive parents. The right candidate will have responsibility for the team development plan, to meet objectives and ensure performance targets are achieved in terms of the recruitment/approvals of adoptive parents and finding families for those children waiting. It will be important for the candidate to have an invovative approach to ensure growth is achieved across the service. It will be important that you have the desire to want to make a personal contribution to developing this service. This role requires someone with passion and drive to improve the outcomes and lived experience of our children and ensure the right support for our staff / adoptive parents. You will need to demonstrate post qualifying experience of working with children, young people and families, be familiar with child protection systems and processes and working with children who are looked after. You should also be able to demonstrate the ability to manage a team and ensure high standards of performance are practised and maintained. You must have a social work qualification and be registered with SSSC.

At Barnardo's, we believe that a child's future should never be defined by their past; every child deserves the chance to fulfil his or her potential. We recognise that the children that we seek to find loving families for have faced a diversity of challenges in their early lives. Children's views, wishes and feelings will be sought and acted upon, unless it is contrary to their interests, in line with UNCRC and Promise Scotland. Barnardo's believes that good parents come from many different backgrounds which are as diverse as the children. Prospective adopters are required to demonstrate that they can safely and therapeutically parent a child over the whole lifespan. Adoption is a lifelong commitment and Barnardo's remains responsive and supportive throughout that journey. Barnardo's understands the importance of ethnic and cultural identity in its family placement work and aims, where possible, to find families who reflect and/or promote the ethnic origin, cultural background, religion, and language of the children., We know that our colleagues go above and beyond in delivering our vital work, driven by their passion and commitment to Barnardo's values. We also know that we can only realise our ambitions and achieve better outcomes for more children, thanks to the talent, hard work and creativity of our people. For all these reasons, we are committed to a new approach to pay and reward, to ensure it is fair, attractive and progressive, which was rolled out in April 2023. This is a positive change for the charity, and a part of our People & Culture Strategy. It will assist us in supporting colleagues to belong, thrive and grow in their colleague journey at Barnardo's and in time will offer clear routes of progression for colleagues in both their career and their pay.

Workplace Offer: What it means for you The world of work has changed. We are understanding of what works best for our colleagues both current and future as we look to embrace this new way of working. Our hybrid working initiative is based on trust, flexibility and empowerment. We understand our workplace offer means different things to different people, and we encourage those conversations. This may mean working at one of our stores, services, working at home, at one of our Collaboration Hubs or any combination of these.
• Barnardo's believe in creating equality of opportunity in the workplace and supporting people to manage their work-life balance; we are therefore open to offering flexible working arrangements.
• 26 days annual leave plus bank holidays, increasing after 5 years service
• The ability to buy up to another 5 days annual leave via our HolidayPlus scheme
• A host of family friendly leave options including company Maternity Paternity and Adoption pay; together with all family additional leave options
• Service related sick pay from day 1
• Access to a Group Personal Pension with a matched 4% or 6% contribution from Barnardo's. Ability to pay via salary sacrifice to garner both tax and NI savings on your own contribution
• Death in service cover of 4x annual earnings for all staff contributing to our Group Personal Pension
• Cycle2work scheme
• Interest free season ticket loans
• Discounts and cashback from at high street shops including major supermarkets, cinemas, gyms, leisure/theme parks, holidays and much more via our Benefit Portal
• 20% discount at Barnardo's stores
• Opportunity to purchase a health cash plan to claim towards dental, glasses, therapy etc
• Free access to round the clock employee assistance program for advice and support
• Access to Barnardo's Learning and Development offer, Electric vehicle salary sacrifice scheme
Volunteer days Discounts at 100's of retailers Employee suggestion scheme Company pension Employee Assistance Programme Find out more